On November 4, 2014 the Kyiv city council hosted a discussion of the capital budget for 2015. Kyiv revenue forecasts for next year look disappointing. The attitude of the new city government towards public opinion and proposals to increase the budget is striking too. We have witnessed the attempts of the council members and the officials of the Kyiv City State Administration (KCSA), to legalize the land management in the interests of the developers and reduce the revenues to the city budget from the lease (sale) of land and construction shares. The 2025General Plan will likely adopt all these unfortunate shifts. Lesya Shevchenko, the leading expert of the Emergency care reform package for Kyiv believes that "Vitaliy Klichko’s position regarding the 2025 General Plan demonstrates his irresponsibility as a politician. He was against this invention of Chernovetskiy (translators note – Leonid Chernovetskiy held the position of Kyiv city major in 2006-2012) both when he ran for an office and was in the opposition". In her view, the 2025 General Plan was actually a test of political responsibility for the council members, who wanted to build another "high-rise" in the yards, parks or public gardens. The opponents of the 2025 General Plan are the only ones maintaining the interests of Kyiv residents.
According to Ivan Sikora, the Director of the Open Society Foundation, "the budget policy of local authorities is extremely unprofessional. The technical default, facing the city, can be overcome only by an increase in revenues and decrease in costs, increase in income from the lease, land sale and shares on construction". By the end of 2014 the city debt will equal to nearly 100% of the planned revenues for 2015 and amount to UAH 13.6 billion. The city budget deficit has to be addressed through the radical anti-corruption, land and construction policy, but not primarily through requirements to keep 100% of the personal income tax in Kyiv.
Mayor Klichko and the Head of council committee Strannikov are not willing to listen to the public, despite the experts point out where to get the money in the budget. Instead of searching for billions that lie beneath their feet, the new team prefers the old corrupt contacts in land and construction. The personnel policy of the major is another striking proof.
The 2025 General Plan, named after Chernovetskiy, would not only worsen the living conditions of the people of Kiev, but also reduce the revenues to the city budget. The residential construction is taxed at the rate of 0.1%, and other categories of land with 3-12%. Moreover, the developers have mostly short term lease contracts and fail to prolong them. Consequently, they pay nothing to the budget. It is time for changing the approaches to land management. The land policy, the urban planning program and the general plan of the capital city have to be revised as well. The size of residential construction in the historic center, the parks, gardens and along the Dnipro river has to be downscaled.
Once in power, the developers want to legalize hundreds of sites, allocated with the gross violations of the General Plan 2020 and the current legislation. Viktor Gleba, an expert in the field of urban planning, believes that "Kyiv lost UAH 1 billion from the 147 hectares of land in Bilychanskiy forest, “given as a present” to Bionic Land, LLC, and later used for construction”. In his opinion, the 2025 General Plan deals with fraud and manipulation in the interests of big developers. There is also an evidence of corruption of the Chief architect of the capital city, which manipulates the General Plan.
According to Gleba "the council members should determine the strategy for Kyiv "to live in a new way"(translators note – “to live in a new way” was the slogan of joint Poroshenko and Klichko electoral campaign in May 2014), but not allocate hundreds of land plots to suspicious tenants at each session of the city council". The Kyiv council rules to change the purpose of recreational, industrial and military areas have to be put on hold prior to the public expertise of 2025 General Plan and inventory of the implementation of the current General Plan 2020. The meetings of the Land Commission should be made open for the public.
